Greed of developers is housing crisis problem

Queen Elizabeth II, Charles Grodin, actor, Iggy Pop singer

Tony Danza, actor, Andie MacDowell, actress, Robert Smith, rock musician Toby Stephens, actor, James McAvoy, actor, RECENT academic studies have shown the so-called ‘housing crisis’ has little to do with the need to build lots more houses, particularly on green land, and has everything to do with house price inflation through increasing foreign ownership in the south, failure to deal with the huge number of empty properties and second homes, existing poor housing stock, and, fundamentally, the greed of property developers.

The new Farnley Tyas development featured in the Examiner (April 18) has eight ‘luxury’ homes on a plot that with the previous one at Beech Farm (25 with a sales value of £10million) could probably have taken 50 affordable or, more importantly, low cost houses for young people who hope to live and work in the area.

When you read the guff that comes with these developments one can only laugh at the Orwellian misuse of language and the horror of PR-speak.

The houses go with the ‘urban grain’(!) and ‘stitch in’ with the local vernacular. Houses are situation in ‘paddocks’ and dynamically linked via ‘ribbons.’

These are actually, like many others being built around the Home Valley, without any architectural merit and often, in plain language, just ugly.

A major problem is that the Council Tax valuations have not been updated.

There would be far fewer of these ‘exclusive’ four and five bedroom developments if owners had to pay the full rates, if inflation had been taken into account and the banding system revised to take account of these type of houses which really are a blot on the landscape. FROM the responses by social media and email it appears I am not alone in being astonished that if Labour retain control of Kirklees Council after the local elections they plan to spend up to £45m on arts and culture (Feedback, April 19).

It’s fine if you have money to spare but all we hear from the Labour Party are complaints about cuts!

Sadly, this reflects on the total lack of real priorities that the Labour-run council possess.

Our roads are now so badly damaged they will take millions of pounds to repair. Care homes for the elderly are under-funded, libraries starved of resources and threatened with closure.

Communities like Lindley are outrageously over-developed, in chronic need of another school, where car parking is virtually non-existent and air pollution is at alarming levels.

Yet instead of addressing these they come up with this preposterous proposal.

I expect my council tax to be spent responsibly, especially after a 6% hike in it, and not on frivolous aspirations.

It is time for a long overdue change in stewardship and on, May 3, we council tax payers have that chance.